Thought the Mountains Would Crumble
by glamaphonic
Summary: He is her best friend, and that should not be transient. Implied AangKatara.


It's nighttime and the fire is burning low when Katara wonders about all the people that Aang has been. She lies back on her sleeping bag and knows that she will likely have the same amount of luck trying to count them, to categorize them, as she would trying to do so for all the stars in the sky, but she cannot stop her mind from wandering.

She remembers standing in the most sacred room in the Southern Air Temple, walking the winding path and staring up at the regal, stoic faces of long dead men and women, great men and women, and trying to see Aang in them. Back then, she couldn't reconcile him with them and decided that it was because she had not known Aang for very long.

Now, she feels like she knows Aang almost as well as she knows herself, and she wishes for that moment back so that she could make better use of it. As it is, she has to suffice almost entirely with her own imaginings, projecting bits of Aang (his laugh, his eyes, his gentle nature) onto figures of the distant past.

She wonders what they were like, about the burdens that they had to carry, whether they were lonely. As her mind travels down that path, it feels almost inevitable when she falls into consideration of those who knew them, those who loved them and whom they loved in return. It makes her uncomfortable; a cold knot forms in her stomach, dread and jealousy mingled together. A thousand lives that he doesn't remember, a thousand forgotten friends who she tries to convince herself were just not important enough, dear enough, close enough to linger with him when he passed.

She wants to be different because it doesn't seem quite fair to her that he will go on and on and on, but what they are will end with her. He is her best friend, and that should not be transient.

As soon as it occurs to her, she knows that it is something that she never intends to mention to him, insecure about her insecurity, but when he sits down beside her, close enough to touch, and quietly asks "Whatcha thinking about?" the truth slips out.

"You," she says and she can see his face grow red even in the darkness, feels the heat in her own face, so she rushes onward. "The-the other 'you's, anyway. Don't you ever wonder? Want to remember- about your past lives, I mean. People you...knew?"

He turns away and the flickering light illuminates the hard set of his jaw for just a moment before he answers.

"No," he says, voice quiet but full of conviction.

Katara feels like the force of that single word has come crashing into her, knocking her breathless, and is horrified as, unbidden, her eyes sting with unshed tears. She hopes desperately that he doesn't turn around, that he doesn't see her being so ridiculous; more than that, however, she wishes that he hadn't said what he did, or that she hadn't thought one question then asked another, or that she could ignore the cruel, little voice telling her that his answer would have been the same anyway.

He doesn't turn and, after a weighty silence, speaks again.

"With everything that's happened, there are a lot of things, a lot of people and...I'm not sure if I could- I just- I don't want to remember thousands more, Katara," he says and sounds so lost. "I can't."

Her hand finds his in the darkness; she squeezes tight and feels like a horrible person for wanting to curse him to an eternity of grief.

"I'm sorry, Aang...for bringing it up."

"It's okay," he says, and then turns to smile at her. "Sometimes, I do have these dreams. I usually can't remember that much about them, but they seem too real to be normal. They're full of people I don't know and things I've never done. I think they must be memories, but they're not mine, Katara. They feel foreign...and faded. And I think maybe it should be that way."

"Maybe you're right," she says and musters a wan smile. "You are the Avatar, I guess you'd be the expert."

He nods stretches out beside her and changes the subject to some geyser that he wants to show her when they near it in a few days. Katara listens to his cheerful chatter and doesn't let go of his hand and tells herself over and over that the Avatar, of all people, deserves as much happiness as possible.

She falls asleep guilty and wanting, anyway -- wishing on the moon that Aang still thinks of her hundred lifetimes from now.


End file.
